High-Risk Youth, Crime and Violence

(5/14/2008)

It Need Not Be That Way

The Denver shooting of a church deacon, purportedly by a 15-year old boy, was preventable. Both of the boy's parents are in prison, and Denver police knew him well as a thief and drug offender. Why was he living on the street, and why did he have a gun?

 

Shekinah sponsored five gang-in-the-park outreaches in five cities of Northern Colorado and Wyoming.Speakers were ex-gang members.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. In Colorado, the incarceration rate of women has grown faster than the incarceration rate for men. Between 1993 and 2003, the women’s prison population grew by 233.3% while the male prison population grew by 106%. The women’s prison population is projected to grow another 71% by 2011 from just over 2,100 to over 3,500. The men’s prison population is projected to grow by 41% by 2011. Such statistics promise that ever larger numbers of youth living in criminal families are going to be left without at-home mothers or fathers.

Local police and judges are aware of the budding young troublemakers within their jurisdictions. High-risk, potentially explosive juvenile criminals are identified months, even years, before they make headlines. But the judicial tools for dealing with high-risk youth before they commit serious crimes are largely non-existent.

This poses a significant social problem -- a problem that Shekinah Christian Ministries would like to address. We have proposed the following:

Local police departments and individual judges will identify at-risk youngsters. Shekinah then takes responsibility for putting the youth in a program that includes a combination of group meetings, one-on-one counseling, jail and prison tours and follow-up shepherding. Our approach will be to use a combination of volunteer Christian counselors and ex-inmates and former gang leaders. We plan to capture their interest in an unforgettable way, and to then address their needs for a change of heart away from criminality toward full accountability.

We have learned from 29 years of jail and prison ministry experience that people respond most readily to other people having shared backgrounds and experience. This makes our program unique. Police officers in Longmont have also told us that other youth programs they have studied failed largely because there was no follow-up. Our program will be all about following-up and shepherding these young people safely into adulthood.

Once we establish the funding needed to properly administer and operate this program, we plan to initiate it in Longmont, Colorado. The first targeted cities beyond Longmont are Loveland, Fort Collins and Greeley.
Gender, Youth and Crime